Giving Thanks

No.350 in 'A Story a Day for a Year'.

GIVING THANKS

They was looking up at the sky. This woman and this girl. Maybe they was seeing shapes in the clouds or there was a special bird drifting on the air. They was like bookends of the one life, bits of the young ‘un seen in the older and bits of the old ‘un seen in the younger. Cut from the same cloth, I’d say, the one faded from being in the sun too long, the other all bright and new. And they was just standing there, like they was waiting to be photographed, and the look on their faces was something.

I turned my head to see what they was seeing, but there wasn’t nothing there. Nothing to say why they was so lit up and their faces so full of bliss. And still they went on looking. The older woman had her head cocked a little, like she was also hearing something, or straining to hear above the noise of the fair at their backs: pop music of the seventies, all guitar tears and drumbeats that made you want to move your feet; and girls screaming to catch the eyes of boys when the ferris wheel took ‘em high as angels.

I kept looking from the girl and the woman to where they was attending. Looking to see what it was that so held ‘em. I stepped a little nearer. Closer to being in their shoes in case it was something that could only be seen from where they was. But still the air was empty and the day closing down slow as syrup falling. And being so close, I heard something.

I can’t be sure, not when there was so much going on: the lights of the fair coming on red and yellow and blue; and the music thumping everything; and the shunting of the dodgem cars and the wailing of the ghost train. But I thought I heard 'em and they was singing church songs. Under their breath, like praying almost, like they was in a private moment with God.

Then the girl caught me watching ‘em. And she smiled at me and she asked if I could see it, too.

I shrugged. ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘Maybe.’

Then the girl reached out and touched me, just with the tips of her fingers, barely brushing my arm. And she blessed me and she said it would be alright now. The older woman had lost something from her face, but if I try to put in words what it was she’d lost, I can’t rightly say what, ‘cept the light had somehow gone from her. And she nodded at me and at what the little girl was saying, and she smiled, too.

Then they turned and walked away.

I wanted to ask ‘em what it was that would be alright now, what it was that had not been alright before. But they was gone, like I blinked and they wasn’t there no more. I stepped into the exact place they was standing before and I looked up, but there wasn’t even stars, nor sun or moon; there was just empty darkening sky.

For the next few days I walked through my life like I was a stranger and I looked for the something that was now alright. And the thing is there was just so many somethings that was better than before. So many that I couldn’t pick one. And so, on the fourth day I got down on my knees and I prayed, to God or something holy, cos I reckoned as how thanks ought to be given to someone.